You spent a paragraph railing on how the new Mario game was nothing special, just a bunch of slapped-together 2d levels, and that even with its shitty SNES-quality graphics it's probably pushing the Wii to its limit. Here, I'll quote it for you:
so as to not offend Wii owners but man does that Mario game look like something for the DS. I know graphics doesn't equal fun but it's hard for me to get excited over a game that looks like the SNES could have run it fine 15 years ago. It just looks like they went the easy route on this one. Slap together some 2D levels...charge $50.
Then in your 2nd paragraph you even go so far as to say:
This game will not make me drop $150 or so to buy a Wii.
In your final paragraph, you say:
Sorry if offended any Wii owners but I just don't get the hype.
The grandparent then responded directly to your original point saying that the graphics were a stylistic choice, and that people are excited about the 4-player mode. So maybe you were only talking about the "hype" around the Wii, but you sure spent a lot of time talking about the new Mario game, and then made an ambiguous statement about "hype" at the end.
Maybe you should read your *own* posts before hitting submit to make sure they say what you're trying to say? We're not psychic.
And as someone who dislikes badly aliased, twitchy-non-perspective-corrected 3d scenes, I will have to disagree with you. About the only valid criticism that I've heard about the N64's graphics is that, because of anti-aliasing, the textures looked a little "blurry".
I've seen numbers that vary pretty wildly concerning attach rates, but here's a recent article with some specific numbers that I'll use to debunk your claim.
The article claims 4 games sold per Wii/PS3, and 5 games sold per 360.
The Wii install base is currently at roughly 50 million. With 4 games per Wii, that's 200 million games sold.
The 360 install base is currently at 30.5 million. That's 152.5 million games sold. So in terms of sold units, the Wii has a 30% greater market share than the 360, despite the 360's 20% greater attach rate.
In fact, for the 360 to simply break even with the Wii's software sales, it needs an attach rate almost 70% higher than the Wii's.
So your argument that 3rd parties not being willing to invest in it doesn't hold water. There's a larger install base and more software sales for the Wii. Just take a look at the Wii software aisle vs. the PS3 and 360 aisle -- there's almost as much 3rd party garbage on the Wii as there was on the PS2. (Why is "shovelware" such a scandal on the Wii all of a sudden? I don't seem to remember anyone complaining about it very loudly during the previous generation when it all went to the PS2.)
Basically any way you look at it, there's no justification to not develop for the Wii. If you can't put together a good game on modest hardware, you probably can't put together a good game on advanced hardware either -- but it'll definitely be easier to distract people with higher resolution and polygon counts. (Also, I'd argue that any hardware that doesn't come with wireless everything standard is way behind the times. I'm referring, of course, to the mess of wires to get everyone hooked up to play the original Rock Band on my 360.)
Sure, yelling might be "appropriate," but it's very unlikely to actually help the situation at all.
However you justify it, yelling at some random school employee that answers the phone is about as useful as yelling at the guy busing tables because your food is cold. Sure, he'll probably do something to try to help (talk to the waitress/manager/whatever), but you're still a douche.
And yes, before you ask, if your kid is missing and you latch on to the first person you find and start yelling at them, you're a douche. If your kid is missing, yes, emotions are going to be running high, but that seems like the most important time imaginable to remain level-headed and rational to try to locate and get them back safely as quickly as possible, no?
tampering with things we don't understand almost always makes them worse
Yeah! Quit tampering with stuff! Good thing that "burning shit we find in the ground because it makes things go" couldn't be classified as "tampering," or we might be in trouble.
Politicians say and do anything to get and stay elected, but, you can plainly see that they are not responsive to their citizens they are supposed to represent...they are beholden to special interests, and corporations who give them $$.
Yeah, good on the politicians for doing the right thing in this case and not bowing to the big money illegal immigrant lobby.
I like all of your suggestions, but I see this scenario playing out as well:
"Unbeknown to you, your parole officer attached a GPS tracking unit to your car. The unit reported that you left the county. Now you get to go back to jail. What? You say you removed it from your car? That's impossible, and the unit is never wrong."
and even have to gall to peaceably assemble to protest your taxes.
Heh, just out of curiosity, did you also protest last year, when your taxes were the same or higher? Or are you one of the few $250k/yr earners who actually did see a tax increase this year?
Or were you just protesting because we're giving away billions of dollars to corporations and the rich? Did you also protest back when we first got our "stimulus" checks? You know, the ones where you got a $300 pittance, and the wealthy received $10k?
Or are you just a moron who sees that a democrat is in office and wants something to feel self righteous about? Do you actually research anything that bothers you, or do you just go along with the herd and get all excited when "your" side decides to have a tea party?
And an even bigger problem is the parents who think they know everything, and undermine a teacher's authority before their kid ever even enters the classroom.
(You know, the kind of people who think that a googol has 1 million zeros after it, and then send their kid off to argue with their teacher about it.)
One correction: Being a hardcore raider in EQ doesn't make you a hardcore gamer, it makes you a hardcore EQ raider.
Similarly, being a hardcore FPS player only makes you a hardcore FPS player.
A hardcore gamer is someone who is a hardcore GAMER, as in, someone who plays a ton of games. Using your example of tic-tac-toe, if someone plays a couple of games and decides, "hey, even though this is the same thing, over and over and over again, with the outcome basically decided on the first move, but I like it!" and then spends 80 hours a week playing online tic-tac-toe, they are NOT a hardcore gamer. They just have an addiction.
A hardcore gamer is someone who'd play tic-tac-toe, decide that they've mastered it, and then move on to something more challenging. I'd say that someone who plays Guitar Hero, WoW, StarCraft, and some random FPS in the same time span at a high level only 10-15 hours a week is much more of a hardcore gamer than someone who's able to piss away 80 hours of their life every week waiting for a spawn in EQ.
In short, you might have some of the best gear in EQ, but you're not hardcore. Play a real hardcore gamer at a random game that neither of you has ever touched before and the real gamer would probably smoke you.
Hmm, yeah, your one data point means that everyone reporting 360 issues must be trolling. Thanks for pointing that out to us.
You should have gotten that message to Microsoft sooner though -- before they allocated $3 billion in extended warranty repairs to resolve this fabricated non-issue.
Conservatives generally have a fear of ambiguous foreign threats. Liberals want to be sheltered from the difficulties of life.
This implication that only "liberals" want to be sheltered is just utter crap. "Conservatives" want to be sheltered just as much, but from different things: evil gay marriages, the scary foreign threats of dark-skinned people you mention, bad pot smoking criminals who will rape and kill their children on a drug induced rampage -- and don't forget the illegals who took our jobs and live off of welfare!
Selectively pointing out one side's insecurities while ignoring the others is just dishonest. Self-proclaimed "conservatives" who like to crow about those cowardly libs are the worst kind of hypocrites, when they hide behind things like torture while masquerading it as some sort of "strong" thing to do.
Whatever your position is, don't perpetuate the "weak liberals" garbage. It actually takes a tremendous amount of strength and conviction to stick to your ideals, especially when confronted with a foe who does not live up to (or even understand) those same ideals.
Translation: "I identify myself as conservative, and everyone I disagree with as liberal. Anyone who agrees with me on one point but not on others just isn't as 'conservative' as I am."
Your description of Metroid Prime is completely off. If you're looking for something for the Wii to spend your time on, the Metroid series is fantastic. (Yes, I'm slightly biased, as Super Metroid is still probably my all-time favorite game)
I say this as a gamer with close to 30 years worth of experience who is bored to tears with first person shooters. Metroid Prime/Echoes/Corruption are all top-tier experiences.
We (the taxpayers) *might* get something out of studying pig flatulence control. That's the whole point of science.
*You* will probably not get anything out of pig flatulence control unless you live near a pig farm. *You* can't stand the idea that yours and *everyone else's* tax dollars aren't all spent on something that will directly benefit you.
We *will not* get *anything* out of ridiculous bonuses being paid to a circle of already ridiculously wealthy people who failed miserably at their "jobs".
I think most sensible people would say that 2000 people being killed in an attack, while tragic, is probably not as big a national problem as hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs.
Of course, 2 buildings collapsing in a spectacular catastrophe is much easier for people to see and understand -- especially when they're dumb enough to think that the enemy is capable of doing it repeatedly with any chance of success.
A double standard is when under Bush the Dow dips by 30% (14k -> 9k) and it's "the economy's" fault, but when Obama takes office and the Dow dips 30% (9k->6k) it's Obama's policies that are at fault.
A double standard would be people getting upset over a needless war in Iraq started by Bush, and then not getting upset of Obama started his own needless war in, say, Somalia.
A double standard would be denouncing Bush's fuck ups, and then refusing to acknowledge Obama's fuck ups.
It is *not* a double standard to say, "hey, that statement you just made could be interpreted as racist," when the statement could, in fact, and without even that much of a stretch of the imagination, be interpreted as racist.
Slashdot Mirror
You spent a paragraph railing on how the new Mario game was nothing special, just a bunch of slapped-together 2d levels, and that even with its shitty SNES-quality graphics it's probably pushing the Wii to its limit. Here, I'll quote it for you:
Then in your 2nd paragraph you even go so far as to say:
In your final paragraph, you say:
The grandparent then responded directly to your original point saying that the graphics were a stylistic choice, and that people are excited about the 4-player mode. So maybe you were only talking about the "hype" around the Wii, but you sure spent a lot of time talking about the new Mario game, and then made an ambiguous statement about "hype" at the end.
Maybe you should read your *own* posts before hitting submit to make sure they say what you're trying to say? We're not psychic.
--Jeremy
And as someone who dislikes badly aliased, twitchy-non-perspective-corrected 3d scenes, I will have to disagree with you. About the only valid criticism that I've heard about the N64's graphics is that, because of anti-aliasing, the textures looked a little "blurry".
--Jeremy
I've seen numbers that vary pretty wildly concerning attach rates, but here's a recent article with some specific numbers that I'll use to debunk your claim.
The article claims 4 games sold per Wii/PS3, and 5 games sold per 360.
The Wii install base is currently at roughly 50 million. With 4 games per Wii, that's 200 million games sold.
The 360 install base is currently at 30.5 million. That's 152.5 million games sold. So in terms of sold units, the Wii has a 30% greater market share than the 360, despite the 360's 20% greater attach rate.
In fact, for the 360 to simply break even with the Wii's software sales, it needs an attach rate almost 70% higher than the Wii's.
So your argument that 3rd parties not being willing to invest in it doesn't hold water. There's a larger install base and more software sales for the Wii. Just take a look at the Wii software aisle vs. the PS3 and 360 aisle -- there's almost as much 3rd party garbage on the Wii as there was on the PS2. (Why is "shovelware" such a scandal on the Wii all of a sudden? I don't seem to remember anyone complaining about it very loudly during the previous generation when it all went to the PS2.)
Basically any way you look at it, there's no justification to not develop for the Wii. If you can't put together a good game on modest hardware, you probably can't put together a good game on advanced hardware either -- but it'll definitely be easier to distract people with higher resolution and polygon counts. (Also, I'd argue that any hardware that doesn't come with wireless everything standard is way behind the times. I'm referring, of course, to the mess of wires to get everyone hooked up to play the original Rock Band on my 360.)
--Jeremy
Sure, yelling might be "appropriate," but it's very unlikely to actually help the situation at all.
However you justify it, yelling at some random school employee that answers the phone is about as useful as yelling at the guy busing tables because your food is cold. Sure, he'll probably do something to try to help (talk to the waitress/manager/whatever), but you're still a douche.
And yes, before you ask, if your kid is missing and you latch on to the first person you find and start yelling at them, you're a douche. If your kid is missing, yes, emotions are going to be running high, but that seems like the most important time imaginable to remain level-headed and rational to try to locate and get them back safely as quickly as possible, no?
--Jeremy
Yeah! Quit tampering with stuff! Good thing that "burning shit we find in the ground because it makes things go" couldn't be classified as "tampering," or we might be in trouble.
--Jeremy
Oh yeah? I've never even *used* a computer.
--Jeremy
Politicians say and do anything to get and stay elected, but, you can plainly see that they are not responsive to their citizens they are supposed to represent...they are beholden to special interests, and corporations who give them $$.
Yeah, good on the politicians for doing the right thing in this case and not bowing to the big money illegal immigrant lobby.
--Jeremy
I like all of your suggestions, but I see this scenario playing out as well:
"Unbeknown to you, your parole officer attached a GPS tracking unit to your car. The unit reported that you left the county. Now you get to go back to jail. What? You say you removed it from your car? That's impossible, and the unit is never wrong."
--Jeremy
Heh, just out of curiosity, did you also protest last year, when your taxes were the same or higher? Or are you one of the few $250k/yr earners who actually did see a tax increase this year?
Or were you just protesting because we're giving away billions of dollars to corporations and the rich? Did you also protest back when we first got our "stimulus" checks? You know, the ones where you got a $300 pittance, and the wealthy received $10k?
Or are you just a moron who sees that a democrat is in office and wants something to feel self righteous about? Do you actually research anything that bothers you, or do you just go along with the herd and get all excited when "your" side decides to have a tea party?
--Jeremy
And an even bigger problem is the parents who think they know everything, and undermine a teacher's authority before their kid ever even enters the classroom.
(You know, the kind of people who think that a googol has 1 million zeros after it, and then send their kid off to argue with their teacher about it.)
--Jeremy
One correction: Being a hardcore raider in EQ doesn't make you a hardcore gamer, it makes you a hardcore EQ raider.
Similarly, being a hardcore FPS player only makes you a hardcore FPS player.
A hardcore gamer is someone who is a hardcore GAMER, as in, someone who plays a ton of games. Using your example of tic-tac-toe, if someone plays a couple of games and decides, "hey, even though this is the same thing, over and over and over again, with the outcome basically decided on the first move, but I like it!" and then spends 80 hours a week playing online tic-tac-toe, they are NOT a hardcore gamer. They just have an addiction.
A hardcore gamer is someone who'd play tic-tac-toe, decide that they've mastered it, and then move on to something more challenging. I'd say that someone who plays Guitar Hero, WoW, StarCraft, and some random FPS in the same time span at a high level only 10-15 hours a week is much more of a hardcore gamer than someone who's able to piss away 80 hours of their life every week waiting for a spawn in EQ.
In short, you might have some of the best gear in EQ, but you're not hardcore. Play a real hardcore gamer at a random game that neither of you has ever touched before and the real gamer would probably smoke you.
--Jeremy
Need external validation of your personal life choices much?
--Jeremy
If having to wait a minute or two for your PC to power up makes you grumpier, I don't think the problem is with the boot time.
--Jeremy
You'd rather the "clueless IT managers" give every workstation on your network a public IP address so that you can connect to them directly?
--Jeremy
Hmm, yeah, your one data point means that everyone reporting 360 issues must be trolling. Thanks for pointing that out to us.
You should have gotten that message to Microsoft sooner though -- before they allocated $3 billion in extended warranty repairs to resolve this fabricated non-issue.
--Jeremy
This implication that only "liberals" want to be sheltered is just utter crap. "Conservatives" want to be sheltered just as much, but from different things: evil gay marriages, the scary foreign threats of dark-skinned people you mention, bad pot smoking criminals who will rape and kill their children on a drug induced rampage -- and don't forget the illegals who took our jobs and live off of welfare!
Selectively pointing out one side's insecurities while ignoring the others is just dishonest. Self-proclaimed "conservatives" who like to crow about those cowardly libs are the worst kind of hypocrites, when they hide behind things like torture while masquerading it as some sort of "strong" thing to do.
Whatever your position is, don't perpetuate the "weak liberals" garbage. It actually takes a tremendous amount of strength and conviction to stick to your ideals, especially when confronted with a foe who does not live up to (or even understand) those same ideals.
--Jeremy
Translation: "I identify myself as conservative, and everyone I disagree with as liberal. Anyone who agrees with me on one point but not on others just isn't as 'conservative' as I am."
--Jeremy
Yeah, and stem cell research.
Oh wait, you probably think that's a bad idea because it's the same thing as killing babies.
--Jeremy
Your description of Metroid Prime is completely off. If you're looking for something for the Wii to spend your time on, the Metroid series is fantastic. (Yes, I'm slightly biased, as Super Metroid is still probably my all-time favorite game)
I say this as a gamer with close to 30 years worth of experience who is bored to tears with first person shooters. Metroid Prime/Echoes/Corruption are all top-tier experiences.
--Jeremy
They also control 99% of all wealth, so that seems to be a reasonable tradeoff.
--Jeremy
Actually, as an athiest, I think that if more people considered "What would Jesus do?", the world would probably be a better place in general.
--Jeremy
We (the taxpayers) *might* get something out of studying pig flatulence control. That's the whole point of science.
*You* will probably not get anything out of pig flatulence control unless you live near a pig farm. *You* can't stand the idea that yours and *everyone else's* tax dollars aren't all spent on something that will directly benefit you.
We *will not* get *anything* out of ridiculous bonuses being paid to a circle of already ridiculously wealthy people who failed miserably at their "jobs".
See the difference?
--Jeremy
I think most sensible people would say that 2000 people being killed in an attack, while tragic, is probably not as big a national problem as hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs.
Of course, 2 buildings collapsing in a spectacular catastrophe is much easier for people to see and understand -- especially when they're dumb enough to think that the enemy is capable of doing it repeatedly with any chance of success.
--Jeremy
Yeah, god forbid someone should choose to not pay their protection money.
Seriously though, isn't insurance is able to bring people back from the dead if they were killed in a manner that the insurance is supposed to cover?
And on top of that, it's not like insurance companies ever refuse to pay when someone makes a legitimate claim against them, right?
--Jeremy
I don't think you understand double standards.
A double standard is when under Bush the Dow dips by 30% (14k -> 9k) and it's "the economy's" fault, but when Obama takes office and the Dow dips 30% (9k->6k) it's Obama's policies that are at fault.
A double standard would be people getting upset over a needless war in Iraq started by Bush, and then not getting upset of Obama started his own needless war in, say, Somalia.
A double standard would be denouncing Bush's fuck ups, and then refusing to acknowledge Obama's fuck ups.
It is *not* a double standard to say, "hey, that statement you just made could be interpreted as racist," when the statement could, in fact, and without even that much of a stretch of the imagination, be interpreted as racist.
Do you understand the difference?
--Jeremy